Download High-Level Plan for Creating Training Course

ProjectConnections.com Template
High-Level Training Plan and Work Breakdown
INTRODUCTION: Training Plan Development Template:
High-Level Requirements and Work Breakdown
The Guideline and Template Content Starts on the Following Page
What This Is
Template for creating a plan for developing a training course, focusing on how to define customer-focused
high-level requirements for the course and how to define a thorough work breakdown structure for
developing it.
This template can be used for planning a course that must be developed as part of creating any kind of
new product or service. Or it can be used for a course that is being developed as an educational offering
on its own.
Why It’s Useful
Creating training is a project. The training course must meet certain goals (requirements) for the
customer; it must be designed well; it must be completed on time and within budget. If the course is part
of launching a new product or service or business process (or if training is one deliverable for any type of
project), the training course will be a critical part of whether the entire project is successful. If the product
is launched but the sales people don't understand how to sell it, or customer support doesn't know how to
service it, it won't mean much that the product or service got out the door!
How to Use It
Use this template and the included work breakdown structure (WBS) guidelines during the investigation
and planning stage of your project.
Section 1: Training Project Vision on the next page provides an example of defining customer-focused
requirements. (This is based on our ProjectConnections.com Project Vision template). The example
Vision is for a project management software company designing a training course to help people
understand the concepts of project planning, and how to use their tool to do effective project planning.
Section 2: Development Timeline and Estimates, Training Course Development provides information
on typical tasks for developing a work breakdown and task estimates for developing a training course.
The Guideline and Template Content Starts on the Following Page
Copyright 2006-2007 Emprend Inc./ ProjectConnections.com. Permission for Members’ use on their projects.
See our Terms of Service for information on PMO/group use and corporate subscriptions.
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ProjectConnections.com Template
High-Level Training Plan and Work Breakdown
High-Level Training Plan and WBS – Template with Example Content
Note: This template is filled out with example detail from a typical project where training courses must be
created to offer to customers of a new project management tool and related services.
Section 1: Example Training Course Project Vision
Project Vision for New Training Course
Project Definition: Create training offerings that will complement the sale of our tools and services.
These training offerings will ensure clients get up to speed quickly with our project management tool, that
clients and potential clients understand the concepts of effective project planning, and that clients
understand how to use our tool for planning their projects.
1. Stated goal:
Create a course that explains the concept of project planning, its importance to project success, its
main tenets and techniques, and how it fits with the normal stages of a project. Relate these concepts
to how our software is used to enhance planning of projects.
NOTE: We will fill in more detail in this charter in the Requirements Meeting: it is very important to
identify the different segments of the audience and what the training needs to provide them.
2. Customers for this training, benefits they need, key “features” to deliver the benefit.
Customer
Benefits to that Customer
Key features of the training
Individual
project
managers using
the tool for
project planning
and risk
assessment
Most important benefit for them is
knowing how best to use the tool
in their daily situation to get
valuable project insights as fast as
possible. (The tool is complex,
can be used very creatively, which
can overwhelm the users)
Training should cover use cases for these
PMs making typical project and portfolio
tradeoffs.
Course should involve hands on use of the
tool in at least 2 tradeoff scenarios.
Requires creation of canned project plans
for them to manipulate.
NOTE: This case could be also be included
as online tutorial bundled with the software.
Their managers
who see copies
of the output to
understand
where project
issues lie
These users have less hands-on
with the user interface; they care
more about knowing how to use
the report output and use it to help
the PMs make the appropriate
tradeoff decisions for their
projects.
Develop fast confidence in and
capability for how to apply our tool
to their particular customer
situations.
Section of training that covers report
output and analysis approaches from their
perspective and the project managers'
perspective.
NOTE: make this section modular so it can
be offered fairly standalone to Exec level.
Prepare our customer support
people to be able to help users
over the phone or web conference
They need to receive the user training
Plus they need a special module on
supporting customers: typical roadblocks
customers will hit, how to address, how to
deal with difficult customers.
Consulting
partners
Internal support
personnel
They will need both sections above;
Also a section showing cases of how it's
applied in different industries and how to
customize for those environments.
Continued on next page
Copyright 2006-2007 Emprend Inc./ ProjectConnections.com. Permission for Members’ use on their projects.
See our Terms of Service for information on PMO/group use and corporate subscriptions.
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ProjectConnections.com Template
High-Level Training Plan and Work Breakdown
Project Vision for New Training Course
3. Other key factors for the training course design:
 Use of user manual: Make the user manual one item they need to use during the courses, so
that they get familiar with finding answers in the manual
 Use of online help: Build in exercise where they have to access online help to determine how to
do a certain operation or interpret a certain report.
 Tools: Course slides will be created in MS PowerPoint. Any handouts will be created in MS
Word.
 Configuration control and dissemination: Training course modules will be stored in a
designated "master" directory and owned by ______________. Instructors/partners/consultants
needing to access the materials will do so from a "distribution" directory that contains the latest
released version of the training materials.
 Feedback system: We should put in place a feedback mechanism that gives instructors an easy
way to make comments on the material and suggestions for improvement. For instance, we know
from past more ad hoc training delivery on the software, we've had to adjust the exercises to fit
the industry and corporate environment. We want instructors to have a way to give such
feedback.
4. Project Time and $$ Parameters:
 Deadline: Courses must be ready for delivery to customers by _____________.
 Tradeoffs: If time issue arises, the management-oriented course should be completed first, since
those people are our buyers, we are planning to provide consulting support for early tools use by
the individuals, and want main goal of the early use to get the execs hooked on the insights they
get from the tools output.
 Pilot: We recommend running pilot courses with friendly users and potential partners.
 Resource assumptions: Course details will be developed [in house, out of house]. Same for
artwork, slides, templates, etc.
 Budget: For design of materials (including art, slide template design, handout masters layout,
etc.)
 Target cost for course materials duplication: Not to exceed $____ per student
Summary Table: Training Components from Above Analysis
 Project planning introduction: philosophy, benefits, etc.
 Use case modules: project and portfolio tradeoff analysis
 Use case modules: report interpretation and analysis
 Canned project models for analysis in class exercises
 Industry specific applications/ customization
 Customer support module
Copyright 2006-2007 Emprend Inc./ ProjectConnections.com. Permission for Members’ use on their projects.
See our Terms of Service for information on PMO/group use and corporate subscriptions.
Page 3
ProjectConnections.com Template
High-Level Training Plan and Work Breakdown
Section 2: Development Timeline and Estimates: Training Course Development
Task Breakdown:
Phase 1: Requirements Definition and High level design:
Hold requirements meeting
Hold requirements meeting to define the Project
Vision and detailed requirements
Define segments
What are the segments of users (e.g.
executive/management vs. technical personnel)?
How are they instructed to use it? What is the
sequence of things they do and how they begin using
it on their projects?
Define audiences and objectives
Define course audiences and learning objectives for
each.
Define needed formats
Need for different course formats, e.g. 4-hour course;
1-day or 2-day; 1-2 hour presentation session on
Project Planning?
Define different course purposes
E.g. define whether we need training of users vs. use
in hotel seminars to expose prospective clients to the
tool in more of a marketing fashion-- don't teach all
the detail, concentrate on answers generated - very
akin to the level you'd teach executives who are just
going to use and interpret results. These formats
might correlate to different levels of training material,
different training focus (e.g. using the tool vs.
interpreting results at a management level) and
different lengths for different segments of your
audience.
Define need for offline vs. online versions
Need for online version of the courses—who would
use an online version of the course? Would it also be
valuable as follow-up reference after a classroom
course?
Identify overlap with other materials
Discuss how the training content overlaps with other
user support materials being created.
Define deployment method
Discuss deployment method so we can plan ahead
for those activities. E.g., are we going to ask some
early customers to participate in a pilot?
Scope implementation of requirements
Do rough scoping of effort required to implement.
Review, update, approve requirements
Decide requirements based on management
decisions about effort and budget required.
Identify Remainder of Team
Based on requirements decisions, identify remaining
team members for needed development.
Copyright 2006-2007 Emprend Inc./ ProjectConnections.com. Permission for Members’ use on their projects.
See our Terms of Service for information on PMO/group use and corporate subscriptions.
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ProjectConnections.com Template
High-Level Training Plan and Work Breakdown
Section 2: Development Timeline and Estimates: Training Course Development (continued)
Phase 2: Development
Create draft course materials
Create full draft of course material matching agreedupon outlines. Including exercise and handout detail
Create outline for train-the-trainer materials
Define outlines for any additional train-the-trainer
materials.
Review course materials
Review and identify necessary changes to draft
course materials and train-the-trainer outline.
Update course material
Complete/polish course material (slides and
handouts).
Phase 3: Final Production and Deployment
Create pilot teaching package
Prepare to teach the course in pilot mode to test the
materials with typical customers.
Pilot
Deliver course to friendly customers, customer
support personnel, etc. to test it.
Review pilot results
Review results and update course from issues
discovered in this course.
Create full train-the-trainer materials
Create train-the-trainer materials if needed.
Final edits
Any final tweaks before production of larger course
handout materials and scheduling of courses for
paying customers.
Release
Put materials under production-level change control
Copyright 2006-2007 Emprend Inc./ ProjectConnections.com. Permission for Members’ use on their projects.
See our Terms of Service for information on PMO/group use and corporate subscriptions.
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ProjectConnections.com Template
High-Level Training Plan and Work Breakdown
Estimating Tasks in the Training Creation Timeline
Estimating the Creation of Base Course Materials:
 Use rules-of-thumb to estimate the work hours required for course creation.

Typical rule of thumb for instructor-led training: anywhere from 15-40 hours of development work per
1 hour of course time. Where the estimate falls in that range depends upon
o amount of original exercise creation,
o the course development experience of the creator;
o and subject matter/tool expertise of the creator.

Example: For the project that formed the basis of the example in this template, the contributor had
estimated 132 hours of course creation work for a one-day (8 hour) course with one long case study
exercise.
Estimating Creation of Train-the-Trainer materials:

This refers to courses that need to be deliverable by multiple people (such as the need to have
regional training available for clients) who all need to get up-to-speed quickly and teach the course as
intended by the creator.

It requires the creation of instructional materials that lead the new trainer through the course material
to:
o Explain the objectives of each section;
o Tell them what kinds of questions to ask to stimulate discussion;
o Provide lists of typical questions or issues students might bring up and how to answer them.

Typical rule of thumb: 1-2 days of train the trainer material creation per 1 hour of course material
(includes initial writing, review, updates).
Copyright 2006-2007 Emprend Inc./ ProjectConnections.com. Permission for Members’ use on their projects.
See our Terms of Service for information on PMO/group use and corporate subscriptions.
Page 6